A challenge for Speaker O'Brien and other UNH naysayers

This news report, which appeared on the front page, should be must-reading for University of New Hampshire naysayers, such as N.H. House Speaker Bill O'Brien.

It was O'Brien who helped lead the charge which cut UNH's annual budget by $48 million. The move even more cemented New Hampshire's status as home of the least-funded public university system in the country.

The goal of the National Science Board (NSB) report is to point out the damage being done by such cuts across the nation and here in New Hampshire.

According to the report, New Hampshire ranks 39th in the country in per-student cuts in public research university funding. Since 2002, per-student funding has decreased by 10 percent while enrollment at the school has continued to rise.

In the Granite State, UNH is the only public research university and in the NSB statement, Dan Arvizu, NSB chairman, calls them the "envy of the world."

So what does "envy of the world" mean when it comes to state funding and research.

Naysayers argue that research work at UNH is being subsidized by student tuitions, rather then being fully funded by grant dollars.

While UNH disputes this contention, lets assume for a moment O'Brien and others are correct. What then do UNH students get out of this research?

For one, they get to help put UNH science into space and learning from that experience. This is because UNH has been partnering with NASA almost as long as there has been a NASA.

Another learning experience has been provided by research done in dairy cow breeding. Does Speaker O'Brien know that UNH has won awards for work that has spread around the world and better nourished those near and far.

And what of the environment? UNH programs have monitored the health of the Great Bay Estuary and the rivers feeding into it. Researchers have worked with land owners to monitor the health of ground water that feeds private wells.

Then there are the students at UNH who get hands-on learning from much of this. And if it's not hand-on, students are taught by professors who have reached into the ocean's depths and up to the stars.

None of this is to discount concerns that UNH has become overpriced for too many Granite State students. Those graduating UNH suffer the highest student loan rates of any public university in the country. As a result, the editorial board here at Foster's Sunday Citizen and Foster's Daily Democrat understands that a great university is of little use to students who cannot afford to attend.

But that criticism is a far cry from O'Brien's inference that UNH should chuck the research because the grants which fund it fall short — something he has not shown to be true.

The editorial board here at Foster's Sunday Citizen and Foster's Daily Democrat believes O'Brien and other critics should take the NSB report as a challenge to prove themselves right and our editorial board wrong.

To that end we wind this editorial down with some quotes from Jan Nisbet, senior vice provost for research at UNH who added a closer-to-home element to the discussion.

Nisbet said the decrease in state support has reduced the university's "ability to focus on important workforce as well as research and development issues with business and industry in the state."

"UNH produces the majority of scientists and engineers, who are key to the success of our high technology and precision manufacturing economy, and we cannot meet the increased demand for more engineers and business leaders and managers without support from the state," said Nesbit.

"Research is key to the innovation economy and we cannot sustain the same level of support with cuts of this magnitude. New Hampshire needs an innovation ecosystem to maintain its high quality standard of living."